An Ethological View of Music and its Relevance to Music Therapy

An ethological view approaches music as an evolved or adaptive behavior that contributed to the fitness (survival and reproductive success) of ancestral humans. Such a view enlarges customary sociocultural treatments of music by seeking its components and their antecedents in evolved neural mechanisms and capacities that have emotional and behavioral correlates. Antecedents of musical behavior are identified in ritualized vocal, visual, and kinesic components of mother-infant interaction, which during human evolution provided rudiments for further deliberate "unification" as music in culturally-created ceremonial practices. An original motivation for music is posited to reside in concern or care about vital but uncertain human matters, and suggested selective functions to be relief of individual anxiety and coordination of group effort. Hypotheses that consider music's adaptiveness to lie solely in male competitive sexual display do not account for purely communal instances of music or for neural adaptations such as isometric timekeeping and pitch-blending that promote behavioral and emotional coordination. Theoretical and practiced implications for music therapists of an ethological view of music are suggested. Keywords: Ethology – evolutionary psychology – universals of music – mother–infant interaction – individual and social functions of music – sexual selection – cooperation